Blinded soldier, widow sue former Gitmo prisoner

May. 26, 2014 - 03:57PM
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SALT LAKE CITY — An American soldier blinded in Afghanistan and the widow of another soldier killed there have filed a $44.7 million wrongful death and injury lawsuit against a Canadian man who was held at Guantanamo Bay and pleaded guilty to committing war crimes when he was 15.

Layne Morris of Utah and Tabitha Speer of North Carolina filed their lawsuit Friday in federal court in Utah against Omar Khadr, who signed a plea deal in 2010 that he committed five war crimes, including the killing of U.S. soldier Christopher Speer, in 2002.

As part of the deal, Khadr admitted to throwing the grenade that killed Speer and injured other soldiers, including Morris, who lost sight in one eye from the shrapnel, the lawsuit states. The Toronto-born Khadr is serving the remainder of his eight-year sentence in Canada.

Morris and Tabitha Speer are concerned that Khadr might get his hands on money from a $20 million wrongful imprisonment lawsuit he filed against the Canadian government, said Don Winder, a Salt Lake City-based attorney who is representing them.

“We don’t know if he’ll ever have any money, but we need to make sure that we’re doing the right thing and the principles are right,” Winder said, noting that Morris is dealing with his injuries and Tabitha Speer is raising two children without any income from her husband.

The lawsuit seeks damages for Speer’s wrongful death and distress to Speer for suffering from his injuries before dying, in addition to damages for Morris and his wife. It wasn’t immediately clear if any similar lawsuits have been filed against other detainees at Guantanamo, the U.S. naval base in Cuba.

It’s unclear if Khadr has an attorney in the Utah lawsuit. Dennis Edney, a Canadian attorney who has represented Khadr, did not return messages from The Associated Press. He has said the facts of the plea deal are false and Khadr signed it so he could return to Canada.

Khadr’s military trial drew criticism because he was captured at age 15 and seriously wounded during a four-hour battle at an Afghanistan al-Qaida compound in 2002. Khadr’s lawyers and human rights groups contended he was groomed to be “child soldier” and should have been sent home for rehabilitation.

They said Speer died in a battlefield killing that did not amount to a war crime.

Khadr was prohibited under the deal from calling witnesses at his sentencing hearing who would support defense claims that he was a “child soldier,” forced into fighting the U.S. by a radical father who was an associate of Osama bin Laden.

“The fact that the trial of a child soldier, Omar Khadr, has ended with a guilty plea in exchange for his eventual release to Canada does not change the fact that fundamental principles of law and due process were long since abandoned in Omar’s case,” Edney said in 2010.

Military prosecutors in the case portrayed Khadr as a dangerous terrorist. Khadr spent 10 years at Guantanamo, and was transferred to Canada in 2012 to serve the remainder of his sentence.